


Resurrection(s)

by Anorkie



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-22 02:50:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20866994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anorkie/pseuds/Anorkie
Summary: This is a story about the end of the world.





	1. Intro

**Author's Note:**

> Brief collections of original characters in the same story. Nothing is linear (or finished), just the result of short bursts of inspiration.

What do you do when The Machine is smarter than you?

How do you outsmart the dictators, the pillagers, and the rapists—the winners of history?

Do you worm under their fluorescent light and let them watch you turn yourself inside-out?

No. I say eat them. Become them. 

Gut the system and insert yourself.


	2. Cocoon

1—

Pierce staunches his fear, and his instincts will him to concentrate— _ concentrate, focus— _ he fumbles with an arrow. It bounces against the arch, revealing the terrible form of the wielder, or at least his inability to be poised when threatened by men in an unfamiliar world. There are at least a dozen of them appearing from every direction and bearing faces unaccustomed to speaking sensibly--only killing. He knocks the arrow and stands erect, attempting to feign proficiency where there is none. His instructors barely mentioned archery, much less taught it, since it had been replaced by the more respected firearm. A dead art.

He spins in an erratic circle once, twice to catch the eye of every man prepared to charge him, to be the first to. He presses the arrow to his throbbing temple and reminds himself he has overcome worse to survive. Ariel's blood is still drying on him; this is nothing.

Someone brushes up against him. He spins, and shoots the arrow as precisely as his inexperience will allow. It lands, shallowly, in the gut of a man so enraged by the petty blow he plucks it out and chucks it to the ground. Someone snatches Pierce from behind and, in the process, knocks the bow out of his grasp. His assailants hollar triumphantly at their success, however brief, fed by the visual of a wiggling victim. They laugh, and he gets it: they want to fuck with him first, because they think he is weak. He does squirm but only until another man approaches him from the front to bind his kicking legs. Pierce uses the man as leverage instead; latching his calves around the man's neck, he reels him in until his fingertips can reach the dagger stowed underneath his pants and delivers two brisk blows to the skull. He kicks the fresh carcass aside and stabs his other attacker in the ribs--endlessly, it seems. Once the body slumps over his, he points his dagger in the direction of the next person he sees. He is aimless and, as much as he refuses to acknowledge it, he is already waning. He stumbled into another fight after scarcely surviving the first; what were his chances?

There are hands on his forearms, then his shoulders, then his face before he can kill another. He cuts the fucker to shreds, sure, but there is still a strangled breath bubbling from the blood. Ego hits him harder than the fists pounding his face. He does not want to die because he does not want to die, but death by a random mob of deranged men feels demeaning after surviving the wrath of Genesis. He would rather be found and killed summary execution style than beaten to death without reason. If not in life, he deserves better in death, and this thought rings through his head as someone yanks him to the ground by his hair, and his mind blanks, and blanks, until he hears blanks clicking from a gun aimed skyward. Everyone is looking at the man with the red sash.

His status is immediately apparent. He's the boss.

“Nasty motherfucker, ain't you?” The Boss says, gesturing to the corpses Pierce left behind. Although there are at least two hands clutching his wrist, no one was able to wrangle the dagger from Pierce's hand, but when The Boss eyes it, it becomes priority number one. He earns a stinging slap for not giving it up immediately.

In the hands of another, The Boss observes the blood-coated blade with mute interest before saying, “Strip ‘im.” 

Pierce understands the inevitable will come, but he thrashes and shrieks for as long as possible to avoid it. A man with putrid breath puts him into a headlock and shushes him like he is a child, or a woman, or a pet. His pants and underwear are bunched around his knees, as far as they will go, and he feels the obscene, frigid kiss of metal on his balls.

“You clean?” he hears. He almost misunderstands.

Unable to find his voice, he hums affirmatively in the back of his throat. Pressure slowly becomes real in between his legs and draws from him a whine that has all of the men chuckling.

The Boss appears above him with his arms relaxed and a deadened glare. He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Somehow, it sounds like fireworks and Pierce jolts. 

“Lookin’ real pale for a dark fella.”

A wet laughs spurts from in between Pierce's clenched teeth as his smart tongue gets the better of him. “As pale as you, cracker?”

He fully expects to be castrated.

Instead of death by shock and blood loss, The Boss laughs. It is not a nice noise, but for some inexplicable reason, the insult is forgiven. Unmentioned, in fact. Maybe he genuinely found it funny.

Everyone else seems stunned as The Boss carries on. He says, “'m gonna ask you again, and I want you to look at me when you say it.”

Pierce waits for their eyes to meet.

“You clean” —The Boss’ eyes deliberately flicker to his genitals and hold before reuniting— “boy?” The corner of his mouth twitches.

“...Yes.” 

There is a pause in which Pierce's fate lies.

“Wouldn't bother fighting if you wasn't,” The Boss says matter-of-factly. He steps away, and this somehow prompts the men holding him down to lift him up. The various grips on him loosen, and he takes this opportunity to jerk away and pull up his pants, at the very least. He remains planted among at least a dozen people, unsure of how much danger he is still in, though his guess would be plenty.

His heart quickens to see The Boss pick up the fallen bow like an old friend.

“A goddamn disgrace with a bow, is what you is.” He pets the wood. The image of him retrieving an arrow would inspire Pierce to back up if not for the wall of people trapping him in a miniscule hunting ground.

The Boss aims for Pierce's head. They are barely three feet apart.

“People think archers are long range, but them’s only the inexperienced ones.”

—

“He'll easily replace those two.”

2—

Someone plays a game of tug-of-war with stagnating muck and wrestles a sopping body from its deathbed. Barely recognizable as human, Carmen helps carry the unconscious thing to a place where it can be washed and examined. She watches its face emerge from mushy chunks of dirt and as they strip its clothes, otherwise plastered to its body, she realizes they are looking at what appears to be a man. He is young. Late twenties or early thirties, she guesses. His hair is the same color of the mud he almost died in. 

Carmen sees the harsh metal protruding from the man's neck; gold can be found in unlikely places, after all.

He is quarantined for four days, because he remains largely unconscious in that time. There are scars littering the expanse of his arms and legs, but the old outnumber the new, so Carmen views them as a non-issue. The bruises on his inner thighs tell a story Carmen has grown sick of. She only discovers one real problem, and that is the bumpy growth on the man's back. She hasn't even exchanged words with him yet, yet feels her heart sink to lose an ally before it was gained.

She prepares a needle to administer for an easy death. He wakes up on the fifth day--frantic.

She sympathizes. “Sweetheart,” she says in a mothering voice. He barely breathes. His breath went shallow the moment he saw an IV sticking out of his swollen arm.

“My name is Carmen. What's yours?”

His eyes glisten like something caught in the wild. Suddenly, she adores the color green.

“Where am I?” His voice sounds younger than she imagined it would; small, like he is anticipating a trap.

“A safe place.” 

His options are nearly the same, but she frames them as options nonetheless: death by lethal injection now, or later. A painless passing. Options.

“You might have a month. Maybe two.” She adds, “I don't want to see you suffer.”

“Don't you?” He scoffs. 

She crosses her legs and moves in closer, which is stupid--really--because this stranger can simply spit in her face and give her the bed he will leave behind.

“I worked for Genesis, too. A long time ago.” She watches his expression harden.

“Genesis.” He says it like her suspicions are correct, and this man did not leave on good terms.

“I invented that technology in your neck.” She gestures. “Your egressus. I can remove them.”

“What's the point?”

There isn't one.

“Do you want your two months?”

His gaze falls away to observe the blankness of the walls. He's looking for a window, she realizes.

“My name is Pierce.”

Two months later, he isn't dead.


	3. Creature

1—

The people Eka chooses to surround themself with are alien to Venus. Their behaviors are in no way similar to Eka's, and their words are often times indecipherable to Venus’ ears. Sometimes, they say so much without saying anything at all, but it is impossible to translate something so subtle and unlearned; like, the twitch of an eyebrow, or the flare of nostrils. Needlessly, she pushes Eka amidst a pitiful breakfast, and Pierce shoves himself between them like they are misbehaved children. He yells, and Eka yells at him for yelling at them. Venus gets a hug by Eka afterward. She doesn't understand.

She watches, because watching is how she learns, and she learns Pierce and Silis have the most peculiar bond in the group. They splinter off from everyone else whenever it seems most convenient, so nights--usually. If Lilah isn't chatting up Eka, she's chatting up Pierce. Their interactions are typically terse. Garmrik keeps to himself unless approached. Eka is friendly to everyone; thus, the only person that will actually speak to Venus. So, she watches everyone else as they ignore her.

She wanders while everyone sleeps. She circles Eka's sleeping body with no motive besides simple observation. Pierce catches her once.

“Knock that shit off,” he warns with an agitated voice. She feels like he wants her to be intimidated by him, so she traps him in a bug-eyed stare. Eka called Pierce their “best friend”, so Venus disliked him by default, but now she is realizing she actually hates him.

“Go to sleep,” he demands.

Her eyebrow twitches, and she does not. The stare he bestows upon her looks like snapping, dry wood. She sees fire. He hates her, too.

2—

You see the way Pierce looks at her. His eyes ignite like a flare, casting a burst of sparking light on something at the edge of sight, shifting in the compromised shadows. Glimmering teeth and pupils peek from their hiding place; it is too easy to forgo ambiguity for face value.

“She's dangerous,” Pierce says, and Silis agrees. Garmrik agrees. They all do.

You trust your friends. You remind yourself of this, especially when situations force Venus in the company of any one of them without you present.

Unaccustomed to the sun, she paces frantically as it routinely disappears and brings darkness so unlike that of Genesis. It scares her, you think. It scares her the same way open spaces scare her, and the same way Silis’ scales gleam in the sunlight. She will reach for your hand and swat it away the moment you accept her trembling palm. She will hover over you while you sleep, matching her breath with yours only when she believes you are asleep. She avoids eye contact and speech with everyone else but will growl at you. They call her dangerous, and you disagree: she is capable of destruction, yes, but she shrieks and snarls because she is numb and learning how to readjust her jaws for kinder things. When she bites you, you know she is in more pain than you are feeling, so you hold her until she cries and lets go. You know she loves you.


End file.
